24 November 2013

Doctor Who: The Many Loves Of The Doctor

There’s a lot of hate in Doctor Who. The Daleks, un-anthropomorphic antagonists, feel nothing but it. There is also a frequent, terrible absence of any emotion at all. Cybermen – humans that have been shredded up, molded into metal, and forget who they used to be – feel nothing for anyone. Doctor Who’s writers have always liked plot lines that rob characters of their memories, of what they used to feel for other people.
But if there is a lot of hate in Doctor Who, or, even worse, the horrific loss of any emotion at all, it often seems to be there to emphasize what has, for five decades, been among the show’s most consistent, resonant themes: love.
Doctor Who is big on love. In almost every episode, characters make choices because of love, for love. And perhaps the biggest lover of them all is The Doctor himself, lover of a lot of loves. He loves his wife, and he loves his other wife. He loves a French mistress and a British nurse. He loves his companions – all of them, though with different kinds of love. Most of the time, he would prefer not to be in love, because, for The Doctor, love always means loss. But he loves all the same, and all the time.
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How many loves has The Doctor loved?(Adrian Rogers/BBC/AP) There’s a lot of hate in Doctor Who. The Daleks, un-anthropomorphic antagonists, feel nothing but it. There is also a frequent, terrible absence of any emotion at all. Cybermen – humans…